This invention relates to a disposable diaper provided in a rear waist region with a pair of wings.
Conventional disposable diapers are provided in rear waist regions with a pair of wings. In such a diaper, the wings are provided on circumferential edges thereof with fasteners serving to connect the front and rear waist regions to each other. The fasteners may be usually provided in the form of an adhesive tape or male members of so-called mechanical fasteners. The inner surfaces of the wings are often formed with a nonwoven fabric in order to avoid an anxiety that the inner surfaces might irritate the skin of a diaper wearer.
If the male members of so-called mechanical fasteners are used as the fasteners in the diaper of prior art, these fasteners will be preferably held by being folded back onto the inner surfaces of the respective wings and releasably engaged with a nonwoven fabric of the wings in the course from its production until actual use of the diaper. Thereby handling of the diaper is facilitated for both the manufacturer and the consumers. During adjustment of the diaper, particularly for a bedridden adult, the wings are sometimes vigorously pulled for putting on or taking off of the diaper. Taking this into account, the nonwoven fabric forming the wings must have a sufficient strength to resist such pulling force. One of means useful to improve a strength of the nonwoven fabric is embossing of the nonwoven fabric under heating. However, use of such means disadvantageously decreases a fluffiness of the nonwoven fabric and deteriorates an effect of the engagement between the male members of the mechanical fasteners and the respective wings.
It is an object of this invention to provide a diaper having wings that are sufficiently strong to resist pulling forces and configured so that male members of mechanical fasteners may be more easily engaged with component fibers of a nonwoven fabric, which form the wings.
According to this invention, there is a disposable diaper comprising a liquid-pervious topsheet, a liquid-impervious backsheet and a liquid-absorbent core disposed between these two sheets so as to configure a front waist region, a rear waist region and a crotch region extending between these two waist regions in a longitudinal direction of the diaper wherein the rear waist region is formed on transversely opposite side portions thereof with wings extending outward in a circumferential direction intersecting the longitudinal direction and the wings are formed with fastener sections extending outward in the circumferential direction and provided on inner surfaces thereof with male members as components of so-called mechanical fasteners.
According to this invention, each of the wings has inner and outer surfaces of which at least the inner surface is defined by a nonwoven fabric and the nonwoven fabric is formed with a plurality of fine depressions in such a distribution that the number of the fine depressions per unit area of the wing is less in a region of the nonwoven fabric destined to be engaged with the male member than in the remaining region of the wing.